Big Boys Hobbies

How do you detect old parks?

Missing a coin sized target is EASY. Miss it by an inch and it is missed completely.
Dont ask me how i know but i always rehunt properties. And Yes i have for one reason or another missed targets. an found a number of silver coins when i rehunted the property. Now a silver dollar i have never found so i hope i did not swing past one.
 
FreeBirdTim said:
If all you're finding is wheaties, that probably means someone cherry picked the park and ignored any signal under 80. Lots of diggers obsessed with silver coins, so that's all they want to dig. Of course, they miss out on wheaties, IHC's and KG coppers. They also miss half cents, trimes and half reales, so that's not a good strategy.

At parks, I usually dig any signal over 70 and the low 50's signals. If I start digging too many pull tabs, I just dig any signal over 70. Can't spend my day digging trash, even if it means missing out on a gold ring once a year.
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Thanks, I usually ignore the 70s. What do you ever find that's in the 70s?
 
Ronald68 said:
What Tom says makes absolute sense but sometimes I just have a hard time passing on any coinish tones. I dig a fair amount of deep trash... I have found a few older for my area coins below 5 or 6 inches. Digging depends on where I am too. In an old 1800’s yard I dig most everything. Not to be a hero but because I’m curious. Parks I don’t. I dug this 1886 $5 on an old property. It gave a tone I would have probably ignored in the local pounded parks. I almost skipped this coin even in the old yard I was in. Rang 18 on my Equinox.
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Wow nice coin!!! I rarely dig below 6" because my machine just isn't reliable past that depth. I get too frustrated digging for a long time for a nail that is coming up as silver. In my yard I will do that but not in a park. On the other hand, one of the 3 silvers I found in a local park, a 1905 barber dime, was 8" down.
 
Tom_in_CA said:
When I do junky inner city urban parks, I disc. out (either mentally/audio by-ears, or via patterns of settings where they are a null disc'd out) : Everything below square tab and downwards.

And then: Skip anything less than 6" deep (varies depending on park and soil-type). Yup, kiss nickels and smaller gold rings goodbye. Yup: Kiss old coins that might-have-been shallow goodbye.



I have had this debate with people who are aghast at not treating junky inner city urban parks in a "relic" or "beach" mindset. They rationalize that: 1) "You might miss a gold ring" and old nickels 2) You might miss an old coin that a gopher pushed to the surface , blah blah.

In other words, they think they can have the "best of all worlds", by being a hero and digging everything that hints of conductive. Eh ? Hard to argue with that, eh ?

But the results are always predictable: They end the day with a pouch of foil, tabs, and clad, and a single wheatie. I end the day with almost no clad, 10 oldies (wheaties/silver), and very little junk. And they simply can not understand why the ratio of oldies is 10 to 1.

If gold rings are someone's agenda, then WHY OH WHY ARE THEY BASHING THEIR BRAINS OUT at junky inner-city blighted urban turf ? :?: Why not simply go to the beach ? Or sand volley-ball court, or types-of-turf that are more conducive to jewelry ratios/losses ? (spots that are strictly sports related, like soccer fields, ski-lft lines, etc...)

The notion that you can have the "best of all worlds" by being a hero and digging all in blighted turf, is an immediate recipe for the type person where the detector ends up in the closet, and you never hear from them again.
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I get this approach, and I am def. looking for old coins and not gold rings.

Here's an issue with this strategy though: yesterday I hit a local curb strip at an old park. We don't have many curb strips in my part of town and I found a bunch of wheats there so I wanted to try it out. Plus the ground thawed.

Problem is there's so much interference I had to turn my sensitivity down to 4 to get the detector to stop freaking out. At that sensitivity i really wasn't going to pull up any signal lower than 4-5".

Anyway among the trash & clad I found a really cool old coin. . . . that turned out to be a 1970s arcade token. NO CASH VALUE. hahahaha! :laughing: But it was a fun hunt anyway. And of course my usual 2 wheaties.
 
MTtrashdigger said:
I picked my forum name when I first stated detecting. I still dig plenty of trash but over the past couple of years, my treasure to trash ratio has steadily improved. I have had reasonable success at a couple of 100 + year old parks. I disc out iron, ignore shallow zincoln signals, and concentrate on deeper high tones. I still dig shallow clad signals and most solid, multidirectional nickel signals. I get a fair amount of clad and my wheat to silver ratio over the last couple of years is 5.7 to 1. A lot of nickel signals are pull tabs and beavertails but a couple have turned out to be gold rings. Good Luck !
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Thanks. My wheat to silver ratio is about 20:1 but I'm still pretty new at this. Apparently it's more an art than a science.
 
I dig a few wheats at a local park. Occasionally get a clad quarter or dime. I have yet to dig silver out of that particular park in my area. I keep going back hoping something silver is still there.
 
What do you ever find that's in the 70s?
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Indian head cents ring up in the low to mid-70's. I've also found worn half reales that ring up in the 70's. Gotta dig those 70's targets or you'll miss out on some good coins.
 
RockieBoston said:
Thanks. My wheat to silver ratio is about 20:1 but I'm still pretty new at this. Apparently it's more an art than a science.
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Most of my wheats and almost all of my park silver has been at least 5 or 6 inches below the sod ,making them 7-8 inches below my coil when I pinpoint the signal. I have recovered wheats and silver dimes well beyond the 10 inch mark. I only have the stock 11 inch coil, so to get the depth, I usually have to turn my recovery speed down to 4 or lower, especially when conditions are dry. But slower recovery speeds means less effective target separation ( I still get as many pieces of falsing iron rusty junk as I get wheaties) and you need to slow your swing considerably. Make sure you overlap your swings. It can take some time to thoroughly cover some ground, but if the silver is there, you will find it.
Go get it!
 
I have to go downtown to hit the old parks and I have not done that for a year now since covid. Parks around me are much newer. One I hit frequently I call "Mid Tone Park". There is no clad, ok maybe a few zincs, copper pennies and dimes here and there but mostly targets are all mid-tones. I have found five rings there, two gold rings almost in the same hole, two junkers and recently a nice silver ring which was a nice high signal for once. Last week I dug a 17 next to a trashcan, first target of the day and pulled out a charm bracelet that looked silver but did not test out so. If I don't dig mid-tones I don't find anything at that place.
If you are finding wheaties then you are doing it right, if their is silver there you should find it.
 
coin whisperer said:
I can’t imagine finding wheaties at a park! Around here finding clad is shocking


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
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Even though there are trends all seasoned detectorists need to know which are pretty much constants everywhere, I notice that local culture can play a huge role in what gets dropped and lost too. There can be quite a difference in human behavior from place to place and that affects what people drop and and also the types of places they go and what they do there.
 
davedude said:
I have to go downtown to hit the old parks and I have not done that for a year now since covid. Parks around me are much newer. One I hit frequently I call "Mid Tone Park". There is no clad, ok maybe a few zincs, copper pennies and dimes here and there but mostly targets are all mid-tones. I have found five rings there, two gold rings almost in the same hole, two junkers and recently a nice silver ring which was a nice high signal for once. Last week I dug a 17 next to a trashcan, first target of the day and pulled out a charm bracelet that looked silver but did not test out so. If I don't dig mid-tones I don't find anything at that place.

If you are finding wheaties then you are doing it right, if their is silver there you should find it.
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I call my favorite site Bottle Cap Hill. All the parks I hit are 1860s to early 1900s with colonial usage before that but most have been renovated one or more times in the last 50 years. We love to renovate parks around here.
 
Guys, I took your advice. Started ignoring shallow signals and digging iffy deeper signals instead and voila, first silver in 4 months! Made my week. Love those mercs.
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Metal Pig said:
... I notice that local culture can play a huge role in what gets dropped and lost too. There can be quite a difference in human behavior from place to place and that affects what people drop and and also the types of places they go and what they do there.
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Good reminder. Good post. Yes there are parks that you will go psycho, if you don't cherry pick. Ie.: If you try to "be a hero" and dig all the low conductors (thinking you're gonna get nickels, gold rings, etc...), you will go bonkers. Yet there's other turf, where, sure, it's a more affluent neighborhood, not as blighted, Thus: you can be less picky.

Also, not all turf usage is-the-same : If the turf is strictly sports usage (soccer, football, baseball, PT fields, etc...), then : The junk ratio is very forgiving. But the moment you have ANY SORT OF PICNICKING, is the moment you add junk. Because there's foil wrap for food, and tabs and can-slaw for sodas. And if there's BBQ pits, then the junk ratio climbs even more: Aluminum nuggets from the fires :mad:
 
Tom_in_CA said:
Good reminder. Good post. Yes there are parks that you will go psycho, if you don't cherry pick. Ie.: If you try to "be a hero" and dig all the low conductors (thinking you're gonna get nickels, gold rings, etc...), you will go bonkers. Yet there's other turf, where, sure, it's a more affluent neighborhood, not as blighted, Thus: you can be less picky.
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You gotta walk away from most detectable areas in an old park if it's also the local drinking-at-night or shooting-at-night spot. But those parks, nobody cares what you're doing with a metal detector or anything else there.

Of course, the affluent neighborhoods might have less trash but are where they'll call the po po on you for walking on the grass. I've also noticed they're full of bottlecaps, just different ones. :shrug:
 
I don't know about the rest of you old guys.. but I remember as a kid going to "company" picnics at local parks... they would back a pickup truck up and dump about a 2 foot deep 4x8 pile of saw dust... they would then 'salt" it with silver coins and clad. we all lined up and had a countdown and ran into the saw dust pile to find whatever coins we could...
before i moved to SC I was still finding these spots around the pavillions... it was like a coin spill on steroids!
 
RockieBoston said:
You gotta walk away from most detectable areas in an old park if it's also the local drinking-at-night or shooting-at-night spot. But those parks, nobody cares what you're doing with a metal detector or anything else there.

Of course, the affluent neighborhoods might have less trash but are where they'll call the po po on you for walking on the grass. I've also noticed they're full of bottlecaps, just different ones. :shrug:
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I would take that as a challenge. If you and everyone else are saying stay away from the local drinking spot then I say let at it. A smashed screw top could be a lot of other things too like a cut silver coin, older wheat, indian, jewelry and more. Unless there is gopher activity, go slow and listen for the deeper targets between the trash.
 
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